If you’re over a certain age you probably remember the lovable Jeeves, Ask.com’s search engine butler. The premise was that you could type in a question and he’d find you the answer. As a youngster I thought this was absolutely fantastic and happily spent many months using search in this way – long before I’d even heard of Google. I thought it was a shame when Ask.com got rid of him because let’s face it, the most intuitive way to find information is to ask!

According to itpro, Ask.com are bringing Jeeves back to the UK. He’ll be ‘three-dimensional’ with an account on Facebook and Twitter – sort of like a Robot Overlord. I can’t wait to ask Jeeves stuff again – it’ll be interesting to see if he can parse questions better than he used to; his command of the English language – unusually for a butler – was never that great!

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This is absolutely fantastic:

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This artist’s impression from the ESA shows the 50,000 or so bits of space debris currently in low-earth orbit that are large enough to do damage to space craft or satellites. That’s right – this huge cloud is only a part of the flotsam that’s been put into space in the last 50 years.

Over 6000 satellites have been launched since the dawn of the space age. Some of them have come back to earth or continued on into the depths of the universe, but the vast majority are still wandering around up there. Over 4500 are not operational – they’re just slowly breaking up and forming a dangerous obstacle course for current missions into space.

Sometimes space debris falls back to earth, and each time a new rocket is launched bits of it come down without even reaching orbit.

I’m not sure who took these pictures, but I found them here. They’re evocative images – maybe they’ll remind us to look up every once in a while.

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I did two awesome things this weekend in Stratford – the first was a visit to Warwick Castle and the second was a visit to the Falstaff Museum. It’s on Sheep Street which is one of the old streets of the town centre – easily found because of the big sign hanging outside and the unmistakably historic cobbled street leading up to it (apparently the only remaining cobbled street from Shakespeare’s time)

This area of Stratford is very atmospheric and the Falstaff Museum building embodies all the history of the town. The house next door is actually inhabited – both properties make up Shrieve’s House which used to be a tavern in Shakespeare’s time. There is also a cat which I took to be a good sign:

The Museum costs just under a fiver to get in and although it’s not that big, there’s enough history in the 8 or so rooms to make it worthwhile. I really wanted to go on the ghost tour however and luckily we were able to book a spot for Saturday night….

Derek Acorah Got Possessed Here

We went back to the museum at 9pm and met the tour guide – he was an undertaker in real life and said he dealt with dead bodies on a daily basis so wasn’t easily spooked, but he believed the ghost stories around Shrieve’s House and had seen a few weird things himself. I was sort of hoping to see a ghost until we got into the house, with all the lights off, and the tour guide started telling us about the bodies buried beneath the floorboards….then I was a bit freaked out….

Being in an old, creepy house in the pitch dark, being told about horrible tortures and deaths that had happened in that very room….it was fantastically scary.

Apparently Most Haunted visited the museum a few years ago and Derek Acorah was possessed by an evil spirit in one part of the house – this man murdered lots of women back in the day and Derek said it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him as a medium. Derek is a complete legend so it was good to follow in his footsteps.

I didn’t experience any paranormal craziness in Shrieve’s House, but I did have really weird dreams that night. Was it the stories? Maybe….all I know is, I want to go on another ghost walk, or do an overnight vigil! Are there any paranormal groups in Harrogate?

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Frog and I went to Warwick Castle on Saturday along with what seemed like half of southern England – the castle car park was full and massively chaotic but we found a completely empty car park just down the road – hooray! The maximum time limit was 4 hours and I thought that’d be ages….until I saw the castle…

There was a queue to get in but Warwick Castle has loads of people in costume wandering round to entertain the kids so it didn’t feel like too long. We had a voucher from the hotel giving us two for one entry, only when we got to the desk the ticket guy said it wasn’t actually a voucher! We had to argue and eventually he gave us the discount but it was a big FAIL from the hotel (more on them later). We also couldn’t go in the Dungeon because it was booked up till 3pm by which time our parking ran out – I’d definitely recommend booking ahead so you get to see everything.

Since it was Easter there was loads on including falconry displays, trebuchet, cannon, archery, soldiers doing mock fights and all sorts. There was also a huge amount of castle to explore and you could go right up to the top of the big tower. To be honest after going up the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona I wasn’t worried about the height but it was still pretty cool All the public areas are clearly laid out so it doesn’t feel like exploring so much as a guided tour. Other castles I’ve been to are more open but I think Warwick is so big they have to do it that way.

One of the most interesting bits was the part of the castle that was lived in during relatively modern times. In the 19th/20th centuries Churchill amongst others lived in Warwick Castle and a mansion-sized part of it is kitted out with wood panelling, window-seats, four-poster beds and all the other trappings of an Edwardian country home. They must have been massively rich to maintain the rest of the castle too even if they just lived in one part of it.

There was so much to see I think we needed another couple of hours at least to fit it all in. We didn’t get to go in the Dungeon or see the trebuchet in action I think getting there really early would be a good idea to get a space in the car park – either that or go on a weekday when all the kids are at school. It’s an awesome place though and if I’m ever down near Warwick again I’ll definitely give it a visit

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I was talking to my dad the other day – apparently the student loan company sent him a letter out of the blue asking for proof of his income for the year 2006-2007. Now, it turns out that if you have a child at university asking for a loan, they want you to estimate your income at the start of every year, and prove it at the end of every year.

When I left university almost two years ago, my dad never got round to sending them proof and forgot all about it.

Months passed. The seasons changed. Eventually, in some dusty corner of an office somewhere, someone got round to sending out another letter demanding proof of income or bad things would happen. Cue lots of searching round my parent’s house for old payslips, tax returns and the like to appease The Powers That Be who Forgot About It For Almost Two Years.

A couple of weeks later the student loan company sent me a letter – now, bear in mind I left university in 2007 and have been repaying my loan along with the extortionate interest ever since.

The letter says:

“We have reviewed your entitlement to student finance because…we have received advice that your circumstances have changed… You are entitled to receive an increased amount of tuition fee loan. If you would like to request the increased amount, please complete the enclosed Tuition Fee Loan Request Form…”

Now as far as I’m aware, people starting university when I did simply weren’t entitled to tuition fee loans. My parents paid my tuition fee up front – so it’s paid. Dealt with. Why are the student loan company offering me an extra £407 loan along with a £793 grant to cover the rest? Actually, I’m sure my parents would be happy to receive the grant – should they have got this three years ago instead of having to pay my £1200 tuition fee?

Interest

When I was at school talking about going to university, I remember teachers telling me that it’s okay, loans are fantastic, you don’t start paying interest on them until you leave university.

What a load of bollocks. You pay interest on your loan from the day you take it out.

I dug out my “annual statement” from September 2007 – just after I’d left university, so let’s take a look at my interest payments.

Sept 2006 – I owed £9834.97 – Interest payment = £19.86/month
Jan 2007 – I owed £11945.32 – Interest payment = £24.34/month
Apr 2007 – I owed £13856.12 – Interest payment = £28.45/month

Thanks to all that interest mounting up each month, when I left university I owed the princely sum of £14138.82

When I started working, my automatic repayments didn’t cover the interest.

Online Service

The student loan service, unlike other financial institutions like, for example, banks, only send you a statement once a year. This means, (to quote the direct.gov website):

No information regarding repayments, balances and collection will be passed between the Student Loans Company and HMRC, other than the repayment information transfers at the end of the tax year when HMRC tell the Student Loans Company how much you have paid.

This means that there may be times when you wish to contact the Student Loans Company or HMRC about your balance, but they can’t provide you with this information.

You can however try to use the student loan company’s online service to ‘estimate’ how much you owe. Unfortunately, my student ID number isn’t enough to log me in. It acknowledges this is my first time using the service and asks me to set a new password. Only it wants an old password…which I’m reasonably sure I never had in the first place.

I feel like I was sold this product when I was too young to really understand how crap it was, and although I don’t mind paying it – it’s a loan after all – I resent the high interest payments that make it impossible to pay off even though I have a job. I also think that I wouldn’t take this sort of awful service from a bank – statements once a year? The government admitting that they don’t really know how much anyone owes?

What a massive shambles! I’d love to hear your rants about student loans so feel free to comment below. Or if you’re from the student loan company could you let me know when the whole system is going to collapse? It’s just a matter of time, right?

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SEO Book is actually the worst offender I’ve seen so far. I’ve counted at least 2 different horrible overlays on various pages – in fact, even when I click ‘don’t ask me again’ guess what? It asks me again! I always say I won’t visit SEO Book again, but then I forget and I visit it and BAM! there’s another overlay getting all up in my grill.

Shame On You, SEO Book!

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One thing I’ve noticed in my travels round the interweb is the growing number of intrustive overlays being used to…well, piss people off as far as I can tell. Let’s face it, do you ever take the survey or sign up to get spammed? I thought not! I’m going to start a new series naming and shaming sites that use horrible overlays – it’s called: OVERLAY SHAME

Shame On You, Wired!

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One inlink + trackback = new SEO trophy term thanks to Nick Naylor’s post.

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